When I moved out, my father was very worried. On top of the normal father anxiety, I think my father thought I was going to kill myself; not on purpose of course but I was going to be cooking for myself. When I was little and helping my grandmother make dessert, I had had a brilliant idea. We were having meringues for dessert with cream. Two white things, one on top of the other. An aesthetics disaster waiting to happen. I suggested that we colour them. At this time my mother was decorating a lot of cakes so me and food colouring were good friends. The meringues were served with cream but now one was blue and one was pink. I forget which was which. My family has never forgotten my brilliant idea. They were pretty sure I had tried to poison them. Food shouldn't be sky blue and rose pink apparently.
I think it was shortly after that that I was given the task of setting the table. I'm very good at setting tables. I can do it American or European style. For meat with or without steak knives, for fish, for soup, for dessert, with cloth or paper napkins, with the good cutlery or the everyday, with the best plates or the everyday, the appropriate coffee or tea set for afterwards, the right serving spoons - you name it, I've probably put it on a table. Needless to say I had years of practice.
I was eventually upgraded to being allowed back in the kitchen. I got to help with serving. I think the rationale was the food was already cooked so there wasn't much I could do to it. I'm pretty good at serving now too. I'm even better at helping to clean up!
But now I'm on my own and I'm a young professional. I announced to my family that I was going to have people over for Robbie Burns. I was going to host my first official dinner party. My family started calling with cooking suggestions and tips about three weeks before the actual date. I'm pretty sure they felt they had a moral obligation to ensure that I did not let my imagination get the better of me. It had to be 'normal.' Not that they said this. They stressed traditional. It's a traditional thing; you can't serve that, it's not traditional; well that's not the traditional way of cooking it.
They got the date wrong and phoned me the day they thought I was having people over and the day afterwards. In any other family, they would have been overly supportive. And they were, but when you've been subtly kicked out of a kitchen for most of your life, you get suspicious of unsolicited cooking advice. I mean my mother wasn't just calling me, my grandmother, my aunt, my uncle were all giving me advice. When your bachelor uncle who never eats vegetables is telling you how to cook turnips, you know that there's a family conspiracy afoot. In a few years, they'll tell me the code name of the operation. Right now they're still recovering from the fact that all the guests had second helpings. They're also now offering to come visit me. I think I'll make them make me dinner. I'll set the table.
Note: I would like to thank my various relatives for their help. Their advice was actually most appreciated and used.
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